Thursday round-up

Posted Thu, February 12th, 2015 10:24 am by Amy Howe

Oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the challenge to the availability of tax subsidies for individuals who purchase their health insurance on an exchange operated by the federal government, are now less than three weeks away. In the New Republic, Brian Beutler cites recent reports questioning the plaintiffs’ legal right to pursue their lawsuit and contends that the dearth of potential plaintiffs is “not a fluke” because “[t]he challengers built their case around an argument that required them to fabricate a laughable legislative history of the ACA and to go to the mat for a generally unsavory—or, at best, badly misled—group of individuals.” In a post at Balkinization, Gerard Magliocca urges the Court to “order supplemental briefing on” the question, arguing that “[i]t would be highly improper (and embarrassing) for the Court to decide the merits of such an important case when there are doubts about whether this is actually a ‘case or controversy’ under Article III.” And in the National Review Online’s Bench Memos, Jonathan Keim criticizes one of the government’s statutory construction arguments, countering that, “[i]f Congress says something very specific that it doesn’t say elsewhere, the Court should give careful attention to the wording of the specific instance, not dismiss it as ‘style and grammar.’”

Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr reports on his recent interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who told him (in a story for Bloomberg Business) that “Americans are prepared to accept a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage” and (in another story) discussed last year’s health scare that resulted in the placement of a stent in her coronary artery.

Briefly:

In a post at the Brennan Center for Justice, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy discusses the cert. petition filed recently in ProtectMarriage.com-Yes on 8 v. Bowen, in which proponents of California’s now-defunct ban on same-sex marriage have asked the Court to rule on their efforts to seek an exemption from the state’s campaign finance disclosure laws.

In The New York Times, Emily Bazelon offers a “sort-of-defense” of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, observing that “the objections Moore is raising are shared on the United States Supreme Court by Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia — and not only because the two conservatives have opposed same-sex marriage; they are fighting over a change in the definition of marriage, yes, but also over how that change is being made.”

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On Friday, April 3, Justice Stephen Breyer spoke to students at the United Nations International School in New York City. The justice gave his talk remotely via video call, while self-quarantining at home in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.